Anyone else feel that Lemmy just isn't addictive?

It's not supposed to be. It doesn't jam endless recommendations in your feed once you've gotten at the end of the new, fresh content. I feel like it's a feature, not a bug, to have platforms that don't optimise for time spent on them, because they don't need our attention to show us ads.

Agree'd, people aren't contributing enough so it seems dead after a 30min check per day (might not be a bad thing).

If lemmy is to thrive and survive, post, comment and start discussions. That's what is addictive and provides value.

For me at least, there’s just not enough content. Not enough communities, with not enough posts with not enough comments. Lemmy still hasn’t reached that tipping point where it can replace sites like Reddit. It fluctuates, but I think it is on the way.

Social media addiction comes from algorithms designed to psychologically manipulate you into scrolling endlessly to maximize ad impressions. It's not a good thing.

For me I think it’s the niche communities aren’t built up yet. If I’m looking for a conversation about a specific football team or game, etc there isn’t as much content here that I can find on Reddit.

Because it’s kinda dead… I won’t go back to Reddit but Lemmy doesn’t scratch the same itch Reddit did. This is my first comment on Lemmy by the way.

I feel that I am wasting more time on Lemmy than on Reddit because here the community is more to my liking (foss and linux)

Only because I can read the whole thing significantly faster than Reddit.

I see no videos or gifs on here, which is a huge addiction factor

Lemmy has zero monetary gain from you being addicted to the platform unlike Reddit.

Lemmy's smaller community means that there's not an endless stream of content to keep you hooked.

Even with millions of active users though I don't see Lemmy being nowhere near as addicive as Reddit

Be patient.

Lemmy is still establishing itself as the goto replacement for Reddit. New communities are popping up all the time and more users will come.

Too much repeated content on my feed. I like it, but I need to be able to auto hide previously viewed posts for this platform to be the kind of doomscroller reddit was.

I feel like that's the point? Lemmy doesn't profit from wasting our time, so it has no interest doing so. This means more time for me to do productive things.

I check it 2-3 times a day, feel happy. I don't feel the need to check it 30 times a day. I'm happy.

I think reddit applies an algorithm to put content in your feed that they know you want or like or interact with. That will make it more addictive. Lemmy is just grabbing stuff for you, period, with no personalized algorithm as far as I know. I could be wrong but I think thats why it feels different.

reddit manipulates their users just like Facebook and tiktok etc.

Yes exactly, thats what I want from my Lemmy experience. I dont want it to be addictive. The way it is now is honestly so refreshing. I find I am checking my RSS feeds for news and stuff now. I only go on Lemmy to see stuff I want to see. Not stuff that worsens my mood.

On Reddit when i browse r/all I I keep getting surprised on the different communities that exists. On lemmy so far I mostly see tech related stuff. I've ended up browsing both reddit and lemmy.

I have actually been using Lemmy a lot more the past few days. I haven't had discussions this good on the internet in years. There's no karma so people don't spam the same jokes over and over again, It's actually really good, well constructed discussion most of the time.

I feel like it's visiting a friendly village I love rather than getting lost in a city that's interesting because it's awful. Honestly, I come here as much as I did reddit at this point. Less flashy. More endearing.

Browsing Lemmy is like traveling in a time machine. It's like the internet from 2012 to now didn't happen and people are worried about the Mayan calender ending.

There's way less content, and most of it is pretty nerdy due to the userbase.

There will never be a poop knife, or chili soap, or any of that here

I mean, yea, there isn't nearly as much interesting content. And with the way the "Everything" sort works you end up seeing the same thing 100 times across the 100 different similar subreddits each instance has. Honestly lemmy kind of sucks as a reddit replacement. Trying to find the next option.

Yes and no, I feels like it absolutely could be as addictive as Reddit but there just isn't enough content being generated for me to powerscroll for hours only to do the same thing the next day

It feels the same to me, but with less jackasses. So it's better.

I thought that, then I put Sync on my phone, and now I can lost an hour or more unintentionally, just... scrolling...

But that's the app. When I'm desktop or web app, I find it much easier to check out without getting totally sucked it.

Which reminds me. Should probably get back to work now.

I'm not saying I want an algorithm, but "hot" or "active" needs to be better at showing things other than memes

Yeh I agree. But also, this is good, no?

Yes, but I consider that a good thing

It's a mix of not neverending content (yet) and it's not designed to keep you in. I'm sure Reddit has had people who only work on increasing the doom scrolling.

Actually, I've found just the opposite - I've been more likely to spend more time on lemmy/kbin over the last couple of months than I spent on Reddit in years.

It got to the point that I'd just pop onto Reddit, look around, see the same basic variety of botspam, astroturfing and concern trolling, and go do something else. It wasn't even worth posting anything, since any response I got was almost certainly going to be from a bot or a human-who-might-as-well-be-a-bot, and it was going to be the same thing either way - just some shallow bit of stock rhetoric that at best might be sort of tangentially related to what I actually said.

But then I came here and rediscovered the pleasure of reading posts written by actual people who actually think about what they're saying, who will actually read and think about what I actually say in response, then write a response that they've actually thought about.

And that was it - I was hooked in a way I hadn't been for years on Reddit.

That said, it's nowhere near as good now as it was a few months ago, and I have been less active recently. The last big migration in particular, after the API changes went into place, led to both more bots and more humans-who-might-as-well-be-bots, and the quality here went sharply downhill.

It's still better than Reddit though. And it's been improving again of late.

I think it's a combination of less presence/engagement in niche content, sorting methods not quite being there, and not enough discovery without going out of band to find things

One thing I really miss is the science groups, askscience always had great debate that I haven't yet found here

I took July off from any of this stuff. After Sync released (my preferred app before), I've come to lemmy to try to see how it's going, but honestly, I've lost most of the desire to blindly browse random stuff like I did.

Less niche communities. Don't worry. Doom scrolling is ready to pounce.

Reddit uses algorithms to drive engagement. I mean, not old.reddit, but regular reddit. Lemmy doesn't.

Basically, modern Reddit, like other big name social media, is specifically designed to be addictive because it's evil. Lemmy isn't.

It definitely would be to me if there was more diverse content, I usually stop scrolling after seeing the same news articles reposted over and over again, posts that have been in my feed since yesterday, and one too many posts about Linux/FOSS or whatever.

I still love it for what it is, but it can't keep me interested for as long as Reddit did yet.

Endless content can definitely lead to a more addictive platform. Because it's trying to encourage more users to generate their own content, there's certainly less of it, bit definitely less garbage to wade through.

That said, I feel that I'm learning more, sharing more, and interacting with others more.

It's also much nicer than R×ddit, because I've seen so much less: ragebait, fake stories, sensationalism, intentional factual inaccuracies/disinformation, shilling, shitty bots, etc.

I felt the same and it's good. I guess that's the upside of no algorithm.

I find it just addictive enough. There are definitely lulls in activity, but they're short-lived and I have things I should be doing besides shitposting so it's actually helped me.

The quality, however, is much higher. This can be very subjective, but I do have some real world evidence. The number of times I'd show someone a meme and have them say "Please send that to me" has definitely gone up since I switched to the fediverse.

It's just a lack of posts and comments. It's not busy enough here to allow for endless scrolling.

I don't know why but personally lemmy is much more addictive than reddit. The content makes me discover more relevant things and with reddit I felt like been in a loop with always the same content or not relevant content maybe the threads I subscribed to were not the bests.

And that’s a good thing.

For me a big thing is that because Lemmy is so small, it's not diverse. It's mostly liberal-to-leftist nerds from America and Western Europe. I roll my eyes and scroll past whenever there's a post about any Asian country because you know it's just gonna be a bunch of foreigners (whose exposure to the country is limited to news headlines) pretending they know anything. And unlike Reddit there are seldom any locals available to set people straight.